Hello All, 

I've just opened the sister blog to this posterous, at http:urbanverse.net. Today I posted on the future of architects. here's part of the entry post.

An intelligent conversation about architects

Over the past couple of years, an avalanche of criticism slammed architects. We are whiny, navel watchers, the worst profession for getting hired, fetish-driven egomanics, and cheap (even cheating) employers. We’ve created unhealthy, unwelcoming car-obsessed cities full of oversized, energy guzzling ugly buildings. The architecture profession is a place of haves and have nots, frequently practiced for passion more than profit.

Actually that last line is true. 

To read the rest, please visit me at urbanverse.net.

I'll be posting both places, this posterous for shorter posts, and urbanverse.net for longer ones.

Thanks for stopping in! 

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Yesterday, I presented to the Introduction to Architecture class of 2017 at the University of Kansas School of Architecture. What do you suppose they will find when they graduate? What world will they work in over the next forty or fifty years of their career? 

Most importantly, what will they each do to change the trajectory of cities? What will they design and build? Where and how will they live?  

<div style="width:425px" id="__ss_9398106"> <strong style="display:block;margin:12px 0 4px">2011 ku architecture intro for gaunt</strong> <div style="padding:5px 0 12px"> View more presentations from Cindy Frewen Wuellner </div> </div>

How do you think about the future?
I talked with them first about how to think about the future. I figure that college freshmen are unlikely to be exposed to futures thinking and methods. They got a sampling - types of change, the S-Curve, various macro-history theories of change, and how to apply it to their lives and work. Probable, plausible, and preferred futures with the broad thinking of STEEP scanning and the depth of causal layered analysis.  

What do you think might happen? 
Few, maybe none had heard of megacities. Really. When I said cities of 10 million or 3 billion more people by 2050, I wonder what that meant to them. Aging, urbanization, various countries growth projections might have just been whah whah whah. They were bright, following along, but i wonder now how those numbers might have been made more real. yet, frankly, it was for context. I'd rather give them the firehose and then they can pick up what has meaning.

Limits to growth I think made more sense. Peak oil, water shortages are realities that they have already heard about. Surely, yes? 21st century living centers on rising prices in food, water, and energy. And this is their century, really even more than mine. I'm a half century person - half in the last millennium, half in this one. Their lives will be entirely spent in the 21st c. They are the first generation to say that.

We talked density, bigger houses, different kinds of transportation. Its fascinating, yes? It will be, I hope they believe that. or maybe I was deep into my own little slice of infinity by this point? seeds, baby, they were absorbing seeds in their brains that will sprout when watered. I'm hoping...

What kinds of cities will you make?
More than anything else, I wanted them feel their place in the world, in space and time, the intersection. And a lot of it is understanding what choices are being made by others, and what choices you make, the contributions, knowingly or unknowingly. Some of it's scary, I already made that point, probably 1000 times over.

and some is shockingly cool. Right now, there's people who are creating, building, living the future today. Astonishingly inventive. this third part is probably my finest... 

1. The city as language. mythic, metaphoric cities. language is more than words, it's visual, experiential. Living cities, beauty with meaning, people first, making cities more human, less mechanical.
2. The social city. where IRL meets virtual, means people/you are the manipulators. The dumb city gets smart and social. the explosion of mobile phones brings the internet into the streets. Augmented realities give maps, twitter, sensors, and layers of information. its transformational. NYC phantom city tour, don't miss that. Heads up display like Vinge's Rainbows End. For architecture and cities, the implications are huge.
3. Co-creating the city. with the Underbelly Project in abandoned subways in NYC, the artist JR who covers whole walls of favelas with gigantic haunting women's faces, people that make their cities more inviting by volunteer, clandestine gardening and benches, beyond graffitti. Art that enlightens and inspires. Media facades that make surfaces explode with color, patterns, ideas.
4. Steady state cities. how do we measure quality? We talked triple bottom line, the idea that cities are more than economic engines. They are people first, and should be environmental producers, not consumers. most livable, lovable, walkable, greenest, and all of it affecting the choices we make.
5. Urban diplomacy. how does a city like LA with 17 million people, 200 municipalities, five counties, five watersheds co-exist? Who owns the water? Who owns the skyline? the sidewalk? who makes transportation choices.

Linus Pauling legacy
When I was at the University of Kansas in the dark ages, 1970s, Linus Pauling, the Nobel prize winning physicist, told us ten ways we could destroy the planet. Population, nuclear, air pollution, starvation, water shortages, flooding, poisoning the oceans, trash. Yes, he swore we could create Death by Trash. He blew my mind.

I gave a feast, a firehose of ideas to a shiny group of bright people with fresh minds in a reasonably functional room on the third floor of Strong Hall. Where will they be in 2050? And what will they build? 

Many thanks to Dean Gaunt
Thank you, Dean John Gaunt, for trusting me with your class of new architecture students. I enjoyed the experience and hope you and the students gained. 

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futrchat experience
In one hour, ninety people from eleven countries posted over 800 comments. Participants came from many backgrounds, futurists, foresight professionals, architects, designers, planners and emergent thinkers of all types. Big business like IBM and Cisco, media like Architecture Record and Reed Construction Data, and institutions like American Architecture Foundation, American Institute of Architects, and International Interior Designers Association came. Plus a slew of brilliant individuals.

And we had a blast. It's hard for me to describe the onslaught of asynchronistic, collective intelligence experienced at this firehose wide-open pace. You simply cannot digest it all during the chat. Now the ebook seems very calm, orderly. and takes only a bit of time to skim. In contrast, the futrchat experience is not orderly; it's flat-out chaotic. Yet relevant, useful ideas emerge. You can find patterns and threads. It's a window into many other worlds through links and exchanges. And ultimately, it simply gives you insights and perspectives from so many people that would be otherwise impossible to access without extreme effort. 

We covered design in the broad sense of design and design thinking that applies to objects as well as organizations and issues. One of the questions even dealt with economics - Can design shape future economics? 

You can read the Future of Design futrchat in the cool ebook format (which I recommend as a higher quality reading experience, and regrettably cannot be embedded here) or by pdf below. 

Thanks to all that came to the Association of Professional Futurists futrchat. Next month's futrchat will be Thursday 18 August 4:00-5:00pm ET/NYC; 9:00pm BST/London; Friday 6:00am Sydney. It's open to all. 

More resources
Before the event, I posted a blog about the future of design on the Profuturists posterous.  
After the event, I posted a follow-up blog on the Profuturists posterous.  
Previously on this blog, I've covered design futures. 
And I have a number of links about design on delicious that are worth seeing.

Your ideas --- 
If you had been there, or if you were there, what would you say about the future of design? Do designers need to be futurists, or do we even have a claim in that space? Are futurists necessarily designing? Is design innovation essential for us to survive on this planet? What do you think? 

image: Seed Cathedral  detail, UK Pavilion Shanghai Expo 2010 by Thomas Heatherwick architect
Bourdeaux Water Gardens by Catherine Mosbach 

1107_futrchat_design_pdf.pdf Download this file

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The Association of Professional Futurists (APF) is hosting its sixth twitter chat on Thursday, 24 March, 2011 from 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. EDT. hashtag: #futrchat. You can find information about the first five here (education, money, work, transportation, big questions.)

• Note: due to Daylight Savings Time in the US, London is 8:00 pm Thursday and Sydney is 7:00 am Friday. 
  

We are excited to announce a new APF posterous site, Profuturists to explore, document, and engage with each other beyond the monthly twitter chats. Please subscribe, monitor it for conversations, meet other futurists and forward thinkers, and add your thoughts. 

• March topic: The future of disasters

What can we expect of disasters in the future? Can we anticipate disasters with any level of useful accuracy? The biggest question is: how can we be most prepared?

In other words, can disasters be tamed?

Are disasters all about cities?

Writing about the effects on cities, I said that disasters are a way of life in the 21^st century. The cost of lives and property increases exponentially in densely packed communities. And still, small town destruction like the tornado that nearly obliterated Greensburg, Kansas can also capture worldwide attention.

While the loss of ancient Troy or Atlantis wreaked terrible chaos for their people, no one witnessed it 24/7 on global media. Today, a disaster’s magnitude stretches far beyond a personal or regional tragedy. We all watch transfixed and suffer together. The twitter pictures and tweets describing one person’s struggles spread the experience like a drop of iodine in water. To ease their pain, we share it. The tragedy engulfs the world.

The empathic experience

Our attention to disasters springs from our humanity, from who we are. We fear being destroyed and feel great empathy for others’ losses.

While the modern era celebrated rationalism, the 21^st century embraces meaning and emotions. We are each a whole self, not separate parts of mind and body. According to Jeremy Rifkin, the embodied experience and our participation with each other “is the key to how human beings engage the world, create individual identity,… and define reality and existence.”

Technologies bring us closer together, we can see and hear the events, and we experience them viscerally. 9/11 might have been the first globally-shared trauma; Japan’s earthquake is the most recent. With increasingly frequent disasters of greater magnitude, more infrastructure and possessions to lose and far more people in harm’s way, we collectively join the tragedy, everywhere, all at once.

The conversation about disasters shapes the way that we prepare. Who influences it- the loudest voices, most credible, most powerful? How are resources allocated? What is excellent preparation and response? Or negligent response? Why do some places recover and others collapse? Guy Yeoman, APF futurist, posted some useful references.

As we see these disasters and their devastation with increasing force and frequency, will we learn? What will be the larger impact of Japan’s quake/flooding/nuclear trifecta? Or Haiti, New Orleans, or Indonesia’s catastrophes? What about the recent floods in Australia and earthquakes in New Zealand?

Can we reduce the severity of events or losses? Can we afford the protections that mitigate damage? How will we decide who or what gets protection and what does not? Will early warning systems improve? Will we abandon some cities, admitting they are not fit for human settlements, feeding the wave of disaster refugees? Will people learn to be smarter or more fearful? Are disasters a new form of overly consuming fear? Are our empathic actions sustainable or will people choose isolationism?

At a personal level, do you live in harm’s way? How well prepared is your city or your family? Do you consider disaster risk when relocating?   

You are welcome to join the APF #futrchat and voice your views about the future of disasters. We’ve hosted chats on the future of education, the future of money, the future of work, the future of transportation, and big questions about the future. These chats are fast and intense.  

Jennifer Jarratt and I will co-host, asking the formal questions and follow ups. Please ask questions that come to you, add links (if they pertain and are not promotional ads), and teach, inform, persuade, enlighten, or provoke us.

What do you think about the future of disasters?  

Join us on Twitter by searching for #futrchat. Please use #futrchat in your tweets, and the Question #, as Q1, Q2, Q3 etc.

As alternative to twitter.com, you can use tweetdeck and search for futrchat (may work faster without the hashtag symbol). Or here are two sites where you join the chat.

1. What the hashtag http://wthashtag.com/Futrchat
2. Tweetchat http://tweetchat.com/room/futrchat 

Images: baby saved in Japan, UK Daily Mail; disasters by country, CRED; Greensburg Kansas.

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The Association of Professional Futurists (APF) is hosting its fifth  twitter chat   on Thursday, 22 February, 2011 from 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. EST. hashtag: #futrchat. You can find information about the first four  here  . (education, money, work, transportation)  

• The topic is: What big  questions  do we need to ask about the future? 

Initially, I was not a fan of this question for a twitter chat; it’s too unruly, too vague, too, well, BIG, to be addressed in a twitter chat. I discounted its 140 character potential.

Then I read Australian futurist Maree Conway’s blog post. “We need to go to a sort of future space, where we move beyond our knowledge of what’s happened and what’s happening now to explore what’s possible.”

Maree calls this future space the realm of “what if.” Those possibilities, instead of problems which assume something is missing or wrong. “What if’s” imagine alternative futures and open our minds to transformational change. By inquiring about the future in a curious and exploratory way, we see beyond today’s realities.

That’s an exciting proposition that promises to expand my futures images. Count me in.

Jugular Questions About the Future

Arno Penzias, Nobel prize winning physicist, says, “I went for the jugular question.”

• in 1930, you had bacon and eggs
• in 2000 you had whole wheat toast and a banana
• in 2040 you may eat hydroponic oranges; bananas for breakfast are a distance memory.

The Big Question would be: What values and conditions will shape food in 2040?

Big Questions address how things change, the meaning and purpose, the sweep of social change manifested in our lives. Jugular questions matter; they are systems and values, strategic questions about ethics, choices, and consequences that expose biases and assumptions. Who cares and why? Rather than who’s to blame or what’s wrong.

Marilee Goldberg says it’s “when a question is asked inside the current paradigm that can only be answered from outside it.” Big Questions break open our assumptions, and create new sets of ideas, ripples in the water.

Maree details a very clear list of characteristics. Big Questions make us think differently about the future. They stir things up. And they are memorable; they stick with us and haunt us.

We’re not talking about today or even this year. What Big Questions should we ask about 2020, 2030 or 2050? What questions open our minds to future possibilities? Try to imagine you live in 2075, looking back to those years.

• What Big Questions would we need to ask?
• What is your jugular question about the future?

Please Join Us – an open tweet chat

You are welcome to join the APF #futrchat and voice your views about Big Questions. We’ve hosted chats on the future of education, the future of money, the future of work, and the future of transportation. These chats are fast and intense. I always learn enormously, like scanning futurists’ brains.

Maree Conway and I will co-host, asking the formal questions and follow ups. Please ask questions that come to you, add links (if they pertain and are not promotional ads), and teach, inform, persuade, thrill, or terrify us.

Join us on Twitter by searching for #futrchat. Please use #futrchat in your tweets, and the Question #, as Q1, Q2, Q3 etc. 

As alternative to twitter.com, you can use tweetdeck and search for #futrchat (as I do). Or here are two sites where you join the chat.

• What the hashtag  http://wthashtag.com/Futrchat 
• Tweetchat   http://tweetchat.com/room/futrchat   

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The Association of Professional Futurists (APF) is hosting its fourth twitter chat  on Thursday, January 20, 2011 from 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. EST. hashtag: #futrchat. You can find information about the first three here . (education, money, work) 

Is 21st c transportation just more of the same?

High speed transportation is sexy, no doubt about it. We have a love affair with these coolest new gadgets. And it’s cost us immeasurably. Cars in particular caused new development to stretch further and further from city centers. And they use fossil fuels. Both are now seen as huge mistakes.

Embedded as transportation is with energy and politics, arguments in the US may wage battle well into midcentury. Meantime developing countries aim for that middle class image, wanting cars before decent housing and causing traffic jams that last for days. But that’s now.

We want to talk 2020, 2030, 2050 – what will be our needs, what constraints, and what options will we have for transportation?  What does mobility mean in twenty or thirty years?

Slow cities, car free cities, transit oriented development, walkability, smart growth, density, and so many other urban trends tie to strategies to reduce the influence of the car on our lives.

One massive debate is: better cars or live car-free? In fact, better cars such as electric do little to reduce greenhouse gases unless we have power plants that produce renewable energy.

It’s easy to see transportation as a topic of things; vehicles are objects. However, they are deeply integral to our daily lives, affecting how we behave, our friends, where we live and work, how healthy we are, even our personal identities. Are you a walker, a rider, a driver, a co-user, or a telecommuter?

How will we travel in 2030 or 2040? What is the impact of the internet, telecommuting, and social media? How will augmented reality, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence change transportation options? How will transportation be different in mega-cities, smaller cities, towns, rural, across the globe, or into outerspace?

What new technologies could transform the way that we travel and commute? What is the impact of life safety, security, and crime on transportation? What new infrastructures are worth the expense and trouble to build? Will sharing bikes and cars go mainstream? Will there be a crash or a wimper after peak oil? What about autonomous vehicles, robotics, and road trains? And (wincing), what’s holding back flying cars and jetpacks?

I bookmarked almost 200 links on the future of transportation here and 140 on transit here. 

Please Join Us – an open tweet chat

You are welcome to join the APF #futrchat and voice your views on the future of transportation. We’ve hosted chats on the future of education, the future of money, and the future of work. These chats are fast and intense. I always learn enormously, like scanning futurists brains.

Jennifer Jarratt and I will co-host; Jennifer with intriguing questions and I with ideas, more questions, and retweets. You can do the same, add links (if they pertain and are not promotional ads), and help us think more clearly, more vividly about the future of transportation.  

What do you think about the future of transportation?

Join us on Twitter by searching for #futrchat. Please use #futrchat in your tweets, and the Question #, as Q1, Q2, Q3 etc. 

As alternative to twitter.com, here are two sites where you join the chat.

• Tweetchat   http://tweetchat.com/room/futrchat   
• What the hashtag  http://wthashtag.com/Futrchat 

Images: Nissan Torii, Shweeb monorail 

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This month, I’m writing a series: the ABC’s of 21^st Century Cities . In previous entries, I explored Artificial Intelligence , Backward Futures , and Co-creation . Today is disasters.

Australia and Brazil are suffering deadly disasters; I hope you recover rapidly and fully.   

The first disaster happened on January 12, 2010. The second one is ongoing. It's a double crime - unsafe construction and terrible response.  

For 21^st century cities, disasters are a way of life.

Do you have a nagging sense that there’s an uptick in disasters? It’s true. There are four times as many natural disasters as twenty years ago. The trend is still climbing. 

No one is immune. Fifty poorer countries led by India will suffer the most deaths. A recent report estimates we will see one million deaths a year by 2030 . Industrialized countries will pay more in economic and infrastructure loss, estimated at $157 billion annually.

Disasters are reshaping our human geography.

• Over one billion people  in over 100 countries are at risk of becoming climate refugees; 98% live in developing countries in Asia, Africa, and Middle East. (pictured Lilypad2  Refugee Floating Island.) 
• The current number of climate refugees is 50 million people, mostly displaced by flooding. By 2050, the UN estimates as many as 200 million climate refugees.
• People will migrate to places with food, water, security, education, health, and jobs, away from floods, disease, famine, drought, and conflict.
• In the US , the predicted hurricane damage on the gulf coast by 2030 is $350 billion , equal to a Hurricane Katrina every 7 years. New York and Miami  hold the highest risk for massive infrastructure damage. 

• NBC news reporter Ann Curry’s tweet helped doctors and medicine land at a Haitian airstrip.  Is twitter a robust grassroots communication network ready to serve in disasters?

Have you been caught a disaster?

If so, were you ready? It’s more than just individual procrastination; we even vote to avoid fixing infrastructure.

• Elected officials get cheered and then re-elected when they respond to a disaster, as they should. But amazingly, when they beef up infrastructure, they lose elections. For every $1 spent in preparation, we save $15 in recovery.

“The benefits of prevention are not tangible; they are the disasters that did not happen.” Kofi Annan

• Nature or humans? Imagine if Haiti’s construction had been quake-resistant? In New Orleans, Katrina wasn't the killer, a failed levee was. The two are so deeply intertwined, it's always both.
• Mississippi and Alabama, each devastated by Katrina, refuse to enact building codes. Florida suffered 40-50% less damage and fewer deaths.
• Some recoveries take half a century, like Berlin. Others leap forward, like London. Still others take centuries and even millennia, like Rome.

• Flooding may steal the great coastal cities from future generations; there may not be future “Romes” to serve as historic markers of today. 

Can we rebuild better than before?

Some cities revitalize and thrive after a catastrophic event. Others collapse, becoming a shadow of their most robust past. Jared Diamond believes collapse occurs when a society fails to adapt to new ecological or economic environments.

In other words, to recover, a city has to clearly imagine a revitalized future in a dramatically altered landscape and have the capacity and resources to act.

• The best time (if there is such a thing) to experience a major disaster is when your country or region is on a growth cycle. The worst is when your city's in decline already.   

• After nearly total devastation by a 2007 tornado, Greensburg Kansas reversed their decline by imagining a sustainable future and attracting national resources.
  • Will disasters become the reality tv of tomorrow?

Rotterdam is a miracle of resilience.

• Gumption. Building on Boyd’s OODA decision-making loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act), Vinay Gupta identifies Drive as the missing link between orientation and deciding to act, in other words, leadership and vision.
• Wrong-mindedness. The most difficult problem is not inaction but wrong-minded action. Is New York rebuilding a 2050 future or a 1950 rehash?
• Mindfulness. In contrast, after the 1989 earthquake destroyed the massive Embarcadero highway, San Francisco tore it down and re-established access to the bay from the adjacent neighborhoods. They chose a new, unique future.
• A future of parity. For New Orleans to build a levee system for a 500 year flood event the estimate is $70 billion. The current repair to the levees is costing $15 billion for a 100 year flood. The entire city’s future remains unstable.

Images of the future

A number of organizations are fully mobilized such as the UN’s Resilient Cities program and Architecture for Humanity. Here’s a few still in the future. 

• Communication networks include our mobile phones. Flying disaster relief robots support a local network.
• Video games can aid in preparation and emergency response training.
• Sensor networks provide real time data on locations of people and resources.
• Mobile hospitals will be flown into remote locations, such as solar airships.

• A medical workstation cart allows doctors to transport supplies and treat victims on site.

• Temporary housing is being designed as prefab or created locally with salvaged materials.
• Future housing will be created on-site via 3d printers.
• Modular solar power enables off the grid energy.
• Geoengineering attempts to turn back atmospheric change to avoid the most extreme consequences of global warming.
• Sensors for emergency alert systems continue to improve.

Disaster-ready future cities

Several trends help: localism for food, distributed power especially the use of solar energy, walkable and biking neighborhoods w/ shops and services, DIY initiatives for making things, bartering/trading/sharing networks, communication networks such as twitter and other mobile devices, and so on.  A global push for city response plans, strengthening infrastructure, implementing building codes, and building higher and away from oceans is critical.

• The 9/11 Report described New York as a failure of imagination. Can imagination help us?
• The strongest efforts come from within a community. Someone steps up; some vision captures hearts and minds. People begin a million small actions towards recovery.
• If a catastrophic event hits your city, are you ready? Is your neighborhood? Your family? How will you be safe? How resilient is your city?  

Disasters destroy normal. Many cities and communities find their true mission, and rebuild even better. It can be a moment of deep reflection and learning, committing, and inspiring.  

The next post, E is for Education. I am failing at my goal to post daily so I will try some new strategies. Thank you for reading, tweeting, commenting! 

Images: Disaster historic statistics, Haiti tent city, Rotterdam Maeslantkering, Pakistani flood refugees, Lilypad2 floating city, flying disaster relief robots, Ann Curry’s tweet, video games.   

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Here’s my January series: the ABC’s of 21^st Century Cities . In previous entries, I explored Artificial Intelligence  and Backward Futures . Today is Co-creation.

“People don’t want to consume passively; they’d rather participate in the development and creation of products meaningful to them.” Toffler

What is Co-creation?

Co-creation is so new to city applications that we have to cobble together multiple terms to frame it.

• According to  Bernd Nurnberger    @cocreatr, co-creating is “a capability and willingness of a team member to shift roles as driver or passenger, so that the team does reach shared targets.” Future co-creation emerges from open communities where interaction and improvements occur spontaneously.
• Collective intelligence   is defined as “the capacity of human communities to evolve towards higher order complexity and harmony, through… variation-feedback-selection, differentiation-integration-transformation, and competition-cooperation-coopetition.” Design  charrettes  and Gov2.0 such as Open Cities and CityCamps are formal community development efforts and employ crowdsourcing.
• Collective wisdom considers “multiple opinions and forms of intelligence. Wisdom in groups is demonstrated by insight, good sense, clarity, objectivity, and discernment rooted in deep caring and compassion.” We connect on political, social, and economic strategies and understand psychological, spiritual and cultural roots.

Co-creating and collective intelligence/wisdom are forming a hybrid movement, a calling to reclaim our participation in groups as positive, useful, healing, life affirming. We alter the way that we see the world in order to solve problems together.

Have you ever considered your city as a place that feeds your soul? And the souls of everyone? That is the mission of co-creation.

What is co-creation for cities?

Design professionals and planners have explored public participation methods for decades, without moving into co-creation.  Co-creation in cities is grounded in two fundamental theories, systems and anticipatory learning.

• From Draper Kaufman’s rules for complex adaptive systems: “Everything is connected to everything else. Real life is lived in complex world system where all subsystems overlap and affect each other. You can never do just one thing.”
• Anticipatory action learning begins with questioning and is open, inclusive, environmentally sensitive, dynamic, reflective, and occurs in real time. It aims at deep authentic understanding of issues and points of view and frequently leads to transformative change.

Christopher Alexander calls emergent forms of design and construction the timeless way of building. “It is the process which brings order out of nothing but ourselves; it cannot be attained, but it will happen of its own accord, if we will only let it.” Designing a city can be like creating a story; then make a city that fits, not the other way around. 

• Co-creation depends on new models based on networks, flows of ideas and resources, connections, places, and people. Furthermore, the process is emergent, generative, analytical, dynamic, and reflective.
• Co-creation blends human dimensions with technological innovation.
• Initially, you will play with virtual representations of cities in data-rich, learning, self-improving game-like virtual environments.
• Future co-making and co-constructing, as done in the past and in informal developments now, will be based on adaptive quality of life solutions and responsiveness to people’s needs and aspirations.

How can it happen?

According to Chris Anderson, when rival dance teams challenge each other via Youtube,  “crowd accelerated innovation” creates “an upward spiral of invention.” The dancers form a global laboratory of continuous innovation and self-improvements.

Although city development is a long way from dance teams, can you see how the pattern works?  From a collective imagination, designs are grounded in place, drawn from and by the community and experts. As you design, you publish, and others build on it, constantly improving locally and virtually.

Several urban trends fuel this paradigm.

• New urbanism and transect patterns reshape urban patterns reduces gaps between buildings. The city assumes a more organic feel.
• Prefab and self-constructed cities take the movement one step further. Cory Doctorow illustrated this scenario in Makers.
• Automation, social technologies, resource limitations, prefabricated and self-constructing parts, and the huge collective global imagination will make formal processes obsolete.
• Cities need to attract people. We will comparison shop different cities and know the differences.
• We are more aware of the consequences of lifestyle choices in part due to sustainability debates and will insist in more responsive development.
• Some cities will continue to build in formal patterns and structures.

When co-creation creates better cities, makes designing cities better, developers, bankers, experts, and government officials will agree. Eventually traditional processes will be seen as too cumbersome and slow. We will clamor for a simpler way. Successful cities will employ all their resources to become exceedingly beautiful, responsive and charismatic including the killer app: co-creating.

Informal developments or slums grow like herds of wildebeests racing across the landscape of Rio, New Delhi, and Lagos. A sanctioned construction site creates discontinuity. Then one informal dwelling begins, then another and another. Soon a mass of dwellings swarm across the terrain. And once there, they stay.

Dharavi slums in Mumbai have tightly woven patterns with frequent open social spaces.

• The community is vibrant, dynamic, interactive, and constantly tinkering with built environment.
• Like Venice centuries before, the density of the place creates its own emergent form that only its residents know.
• While the Mumbai slums are terribly dangerous examples of life safety and few formal rights, the architecture is feeds the community.

In contrast, public housing in LA does nothing to spark social life; you might say the same thing about traffic congestion, strip malls, and bland subdivisions. When we supply unhealthy boxes for people to live in, they lose their sense of worth and connectedness.

• The key to co-creation is weaving together resources of users and experts. We all constantly adapt and improve. No building is ever done.

“To use a building is to make it, by physical transformation or by inhabiting it in ways not previously imagined or by conceiving it anew.” Jonathon Hill  

City stories and other radical acts of reclaiming place

Like the informal development in emerging markets, DIY/co-created cities reveal people’s concerns and their solutions. Daniel Pink calls this phenomenon “high concept, high touch.” In the modern, information era, people used their left brain, rational thinking. In the 21^st century conceptual age, we tune into our right brain, creative ideas.

We need to put storytelling back into our cities.

• Underbelly Project, New York City artists took an abandoned subway and secretly created artwork on the surfaces. The installation was open for one night to a select few. 
• German Guerrilla Bench appears to be a transformer and opens into a bench.

• Sydney Opera House Media Façade portrays the future of media installations. With a projector, you can add messages and images across the face of a building.
• Guerrilla Gardening in median strips and other unclaimed spaces beautifies forlorn streets.

• Mountain Dwellings gives the look of an assembled city.

• Container City stacks shipping containers into a stunning mixed use village.  

Would you want to co-create a neighborhood or district?

Is a co-created future one that you would welcome? On the one hand we just want our cities to work well for us, to live  in an area that is beautiful, healthy, and suits our lifestyle. Yet seeing a group of people around the world improve cities again and again. Having the city, designers, and developers working as partners would be thrilling. A constantly better place to live.   

When we see the city as a whole, we begin to understand deeply grounded interconnections. We stop wasteful development patterns and use limited resources including ourselves towards the greater good. Far from a Pollyanna approach, it’s survival. In our healthiest, most sustainable, life affirming forms, cities and people will be constellations of connections, linked through unanticipated discoveries.

Next, D is for Disasters.

Images: VM Mountain Dwellings by BIG on ArchDaily; Give a Minute Chicago Civic Engagement Project on Sustainable Cities Collective. More reading: participation, co-creating.

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For a brief intermission, today is Lets Blog Off . A group of design and construction folks blog on one topic. Thanks to a twisted survey (which I believe was stacked by our ringleader Paul Anater), we are pondering our obits, linked here.

Of her ten books, five were listed as New York Times Bestsellers, three in urban futures and two in science fiction. After earning an MS in FS/forecasting from the University of Houston and a doctorate in communication studies from the University of Kansas, Cindy taught students from thirty-three countries, visited the Space Station and cycled across India. She loved puppies but only had one, Lexy, who never barked.   

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Here’s my January series: the ABC’s of 21^st Century Cities . Yesterday I explored the Artificial Intelligence . Today we’re moving onto B.

When there, I feel like I am living in a dream. I am immersed in a distinctive urban experience filled with tactile, sensory experiences. Yet it’s real. Venice exists. How did they build a dream?

Backward futures draw upon the sensory life, the connection between people and place, and the art of crafting things that existed before intensive automation. The engine and the computer chip fundamentally changed us and how we make, use, and know cities.

The value of resourceless

During the Depression, global unemployment sat at 25% for most of a decade. People learned lessons that created the Greatest Generation. According to Strauss and Howe, the next generation  will develop a similar philosophy. The conflict that pulls us out of this high unemployment may be the way we develop cities and our lifestyles.

• Instead of only growth, many developed nations including Europe, China, and some American regions will be shrinking and aging. Frugality lessons will abound.
• For the past seventy years, cities have prospered by strong growth. For the next fifty years, quality is key, an important topic I cover in more detail in future posts.

Slow cities

Inspired by a similar movement in slow food, Citta Slow and the Slow Movement reject fast food, fast highways, and fast living in favor of mindfulness and attention. They aim to reassert mindful living and connection to the land, food, and other people as an anti-dote to stress.

In bioregionalism and localism (similarly permaculture), people buy local, organically grown food, shop in locally owned stores, and connect to a regional identity based on indigenous resources and historic patterns (reference Alexander Timeless Way of Building and Mouzon The Original Green).

They create community economic development (CED) collectives to build networks for education, housing, health, and environmental needs.

Jan Gehl calls this back-to-the-future approach “cities for people.” His aim: lively, safe, sustainable, and healthy cities. He cites fewer streets and highways like San Francisco, bike paths like Copenhagen’s, better streets like Melbourne, and pedestrian paths like Venice. He says cities are meeting places “by the people and for the people.” Rather than cities based on streets for cars, we have life between buildings.

A people-first strategy is obvious in highly walkable cities like Zurich, New York, and San Francisco.

• Encourage people to stay, not take the fastest route out of the city. 
• Make cars uncomfortable by mixing them with other traffic.
• Increase congestion rather than decrease it.
• Have lovely attractions like restaurants, shopping, public spaces and interesting streets.
• People like to be where there are people. Create places for sitting and watching.

Simple cities

Who knows the life of walking, biking, and carriage rides more than the Amish? What do you imagine cities would look like based on their principles? 

• Primary uses within walking distance
• Narrow shaded streets to accommodate horse carriages, bikes and walking
• Lower scale buildings that house work and living spaces
• Gardens growing food, barns with farm animals, chickens, etc 
• Making things – furniture, food, clothing
• Community spaces for meetings, events, entertainment and education

If we add scale to the buildings, broadband, lightrail, solar and wind power, the simple city would likely reduce our eco-footprint to half that of typical urban westerners. And still be fitting and livable for contemporary lifestyles.

New urbanism re-introduced the values of traditional neighborhoods as an anti-dote to suburbs: mixed use, tight lots, increased density, walkable streets, excellent public spaces, smaller retail/residential, cars to the back, front porches, and extra dwellings at the rear. As sustainable development interests grew, the two movements found common ground in compact growth. 

A long list of trends reduce the role of the car: communication technologies, business practices from hierarchies to networks, changing job patterns, increased energy costs, carbon emissions, desire for better lifestyles, health concerns, aging, and extended families that can relieve daycare trips.     

• Models for refurbishing suburban neighborhoods are slowly emerging. The Sprawl Repair Manual makes unused space functional. Streets and sidewalks are connected. Residential and commercial infill large yards and parking lots.
• Car-free or limited-car developments are increasing.
• Rather than houses and buildings as expenses, make them into producers – energy, farming, home office, day care – much as the family farm or shop once serve as the center of income.
• Transportation shifts from auto-dominated to a mix of walking, biking, transit, and cars including car sharing.  

B stands for buses and biking; both are useful backward futures.

I didn’t write this post as a balance to yesterday’s high-tech AI, although perhaps subconsciously I did. While AI, IT, and augmented reality extend our knowledge and experience of places, they also filter our connections to the sensory experience of place.

In the backward future city, we can be more present, more mindful, more attentive to our whole self, and actively spatially engaged while frequently AI favors the brain and eyes.

For example, do you find that you sit too still when you’re at a computer? When I draw by hand, I stand and move. At a keyboard, I am in a frozen position, only my hands and eyes moving.

Cities, buildings, and work spaces should make us move. And they should fit like outerwear. Like Venice.

Next, C is for Co-creating.

Images: Copenhagen, Venice, Amish County, PA, Suburban fix from The Sprawl Repair Manual, Shrinking populations 2050

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Yesterday, I introduced a January series: the ABC’s of 21^st Century Cities . Today’s the first letter A.

What is AI? 

AI is generally defined as machines that are smarter than human intelligence. The Turing Test , the primary bellwether, simply asks a computer to conduct a conversation without the human knowing she/he is talking to a computer.

In urban terms, an AI system perceives its environment and responds to successfully complete a particular job. For cities, the most intriguing are networks of machines that aggregate data, respond, and adapt without our intervention. The machines seem self-aware and learn, the technological singularity . Machines surpass our ability to understand or control them.

Ray Kurzweil believes that by 2020 or so, computers will reach human brain capacity and by 2045, they will self-invent, no longer dependent on our creativity or intervention.

Should we fear super-intelligent self-improving machines the size of a city? 

Do you remember HAL9000, the computer in Arthur C. Clark’s Space Odyssey and the film 2001 Space Odyssey? The fear of AI is the human fear of all machines: they will own us. Collective super-intelligence the size of a city will be the most potent weapon and/or collaborative experience ever invented.

In Zuboff’s In The Age of the Smart Machine, she analyzes the qualitative differences we experienced when we moved from a society of artisans to button pushers.

We are particularly clumsy at seeing the long-term consequences of innovations.

• It’s possible that machines will supply ideas, but that we will still be the makers, even more than we are today, through co-creating and DIY. Six billion brains will still be the largest form of intelligence on earth. Technology weaves that collective capacity even more tightly.
• We trade our freedoms and privacy every day for access to something else. A few voices will try to protect our sovereign rights but they will go largely unheard because we are only being protected from ourselves.

Will AI control transportation?

Airplanes and trains have long been controlled by autopilot computers. Google, Stanford, and MIT have road tested autonomic driving, or self-driving robotic cars. Our cars are already robots in terms of automation. Computers are rapidly making cars smarter and better drivers than us from self-parking to crash avoidance. Frankly, based on 40k US deaths/year, we desperately need their help.

• Cars are well on their way to becoming one big swarm more concerned with each other than with us.
• Eventually, rather than competing modes of transportation, light rail, buses and cars may have more in common than not.
• Mobility freedom is not only control but also access, representation in decisions, and choice.  

If we are generating and capturing energy to share and sell others, the AI/smart grid becomes our partner, the tool for a new source of income. However, if we are at the mercy of power company electricity, we can look forward to brown outs and black outs. At the rate of new technology adoption, power loads just keep rising. Appliances and computers may not run during peak hours. And worse – you will know when your neighbor is hogging power and vice versa.

• Will we be shamed into energy conservation? Or we will simply be controlled through rations.
• Control and privacy are forefront in a world of limited shared resources and AI. How data gathered thru AI is revealed is up to our collective agreements.
• More energy efficient buildings, better batteries, low energy use appliances will eventually reduce our power needs.
• Real time urban data will be gathered from people, buildings, and things to create useful knowledge about how we use cities that will inform design and user decisions.

AI Design Build

At long last, design and construction are becoming data-rich. Next they will become self-improving, then self-assembling, and finally self-designing. Yet self-expression is a human talent, not a computerized algorithm. Creativity as well as the relationships, communication, and decision-making require humans.

Following in the wake of manufacturing, construction is being automated. First with material deliveries, then tools, and finally with self-constructing buildings. Experiments with robots have reached demonstration levels. Consumer goods distribution centers have hesitated on robot investment because they have peak seasons and the robots sit idle otherwise. Construction operates project by project to maintain a steady workflow, only slowing for economic cycles. Without too much trouble, a city will be self-constructing, particularly useful for infrastructure and repetitive projects.

• Without human intervention and oversight, cities will become dull and cookie cutter. Our job will be to alter the cities before we learn to hate them. We require imperfection to love a place.
• A full accounting of all materials and resources in a region will enable local distributions, recycling, adapting, and re-allocating of supplies and scheduling maintenance.
• Dominating those asset allocations will make or break various urban areas. Urban negotiations open a whole new field.

The self-aware, self-improving, sentient city will adopt the patterns of the existing city. Machines are purely rational. Humans are intuitive, emotional, and imperfect plus we are culturally determined. A machine can only copy or replicate these characteristics, which might be flawless. That’s the problem with the conversant computer. It does not know how to improvise, make errors, be human.

We love our houses, favorite shops, parks, even our cars. These attachments will become exponentially deeper. They will remember key dates and react on cue. They will know our habits and when we break routine. If your house can talk to you, play scrabble, fix you meals, layout your clothes, wake you up, start the coffee, prepare your shower, order the groceries, complete your reports, and sing you to sleep, will you believe it cares for you?

• We will need retraining on the meaning of artificial.
• Will we ever be able to move? Will we strip the house-friend of its knowledge and mourn its death?
• Will AI computers strive for self-preservation? And to self-replicate? Will they hoard or aggressively acquire materials to create their projects?
• Will they share our most precious secrets? Doesn’t Facebook do it every single day? We won’t need to report our sins; the shaman and tax officer and probably your mom, daughter, enemies, and neighbors will already know.

The city’s brain

As we build swarms of self-improving intelligent machines, we will need a meta-AI to monitor and coordinate. That’s HAL9000. Will we be able to control it? I rather doubt it. Furthermore, how safe will that concentrated power be? Imagine the cyber attacks and security threats when so much power is held by one entity.

• When all the machines are hooked together as an army of super-intelligent computers, are they controllable?
• Moreover, will we become part of the super-intelligence? Notice that Singularity U includes neuroscience. Later, we will look at transhumanism and our active participation in collective intelligence.

The caveat is huge. A city as a functioning extension of the people may be the most intoxicating experience we can imagine. The most creative and potentially invasive intelligent computers will work in partnership with people. We have to be able to let go, opt out. Increasingly, it will be impossible unless we demand it. 

Tomorrow, B is for Backward.

Images: Robotic construction in NYC on ArchDaily, Ford Sync Destination Eco-navigation system and New Songdo in Fast Co, automated road trains on Crunchgear, PlanIT Masterplan, Geminoid robot.

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As a futurist, what intrigues me about the future is the fact that we can freely replace one future with another and fearlessly explore decades, even centuries, ahead. Futurists are large-pattern, context-oriented. Time is our domain; we think in terms of decades more than years.   

I marry these two methods to try to understand where our cities are headed. This month, I offer you an alphabet of future cities, twenty-six slices that reveal, explore, and imagine what we might build and how we might live, work, and play in 2020, 2030, or 2050.

Sound like fun?

If you track urban development, you hear a lot of the same concepts. Walkable, livable, quality of life (QOL), redensify, green/LEED/BREEAM buildings, green cities, smart cities, smart growth, smart grid, new urbanism, mixed use, complete streets, car-free, bike highways, bus rapid transit (BRT), transit oriented design, transect zoning, multi-modal transportation. Rather than being “the future,” these ideas are happening in some cities today, so-called used futures .

• Our most advanced, high performing cities are technology-intense. In these gazelle cities, people believe innovation is part of their DNA. They aim to show the rest of the world how to build, more specifically, how to live. New transportation, environmental, and communication methods take root. Hi-tech companies and creative people flock to these Meccas.
• On the other end of the spectrum in African, Middle Eastern, and Southeast Asian cities, people wish for indoor plumbing, clean water, fresh air. The same enemies that London and New York conquered in the 1800s strangle the people of Lagos and New Delhi today but at a mind-boggling scale.

What happens is a massive urban divide. The greater our technological advances, the greater the gap. Somewhere, some city will still be fighting to supply basic services with primitive solutions while cities with the highest levels of tech reach further and further, stretching the extremes.

It’s not all about resources and technology.

Paradoxically primitive sometimes works better than intensive technology. The current generation may be the first to employ just-right-tech or even un-tech. As a new form of intelligence, future gens will know when to switch off. Similarly for cities, high-rise, high-speed tech is not always the most livable, functional, beautiful, or viable response.

What will we do?

It’s said that this is the century of urbanization. In 2007, for the first time in history, the majority of people live in cities. We built American cities according to what we knew in 1950, just as Europe built cities with technologies and lifestyles of prior centuries. Now we know more. 

• Unlike any other time in history, cities and buildings are ready to be more than a roof and four walls. They can expand our quality of life or destroy it. Beyond shelter, buildings and cities can feed our spirits and replenish the environment. Or they can be a curse, a deathtrap, a monstrous albatross. 

In ten, twenty, thirty years, how will you build, work or live differently? What will it mean to your children or to their children? Will your city, your neighborhood, your home feed your soul or anger you?

Imagine if you were suddenly transported to 1950. Would you support the Federal Highway Act? The Urban Renewal Act? Removal of trolleys and cable car systems? All of these decisions shaped how we live today. In hindsight, what would you do?

Standing in 2011, we have equally momentous choices. Maybe even bigger. January 1, let's begin.

A is for Artificial Intelligence.          

Images: Urbanization on TriasWiki, Portland Street Cafe, Singapore kids, Urban Population chart.

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The Association of Professional Futurists (APF) is hosting its third twitter chat on Thursday, December 9, 2010 from 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. EST. Use these hashtags: #apf #futrchat. You can find information about the first two futrchats here.

How do you see the future of work?

• Work is no longer a place you go; it’s what you do.
• The future of work will be radically different than anything we know today, or can even imagine. In the economy of the future people will get their work done where and when they need to-or want to.
• Managing work and talent in today's dynamic, distributed, mobile economy is incredibly challenging-but highly rewarding. We offer guidance and advice on how to succeed in a world that's being turned upside down by technology, globalization, demographics, and environmental concerns.

Questions about the future of work

As we were planning this chat, Jennifer Jarratt and I wondered about the future of professions. Our respective fields, journalism and architecture, are both traditional professions that are not sure of their futures, or if they will even remain professions per se.

1. Will we continue with disciplinary silos? Do specialty fields still serve a purpose or are they a thing of the past?
2. How will aging affect work?
3. How do knowledge migration, crowdsourcing, co-creating, social media, and communication technology change the ways we work?  Are trades or professions more affected?
4. How does globalization of manufacturing and services affect work? And the corresponding notion of localization?
5. What is the connection between the current lackluster job market and the future of work? Is a weak job market a temporary anomaly or the shape of things to come?

How will we work in 2020, 2030, or even 2050 differently than today? Here is a TED video by Jason Fried, author of Rework, about the future of work, featured on CNN last week. He proposes non-talk times to enable creative work without distractions. I love that idea. Is it realistic?

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I bookmarked a few links on the future of work here.

Please Join Us – an open tweet chat

You are welcome to join the APF #futrchat to share your ideas about the future of work. We’ve hosted chats on the future of education and the future of money. Both were exhilarating experiences. I think people learned and shared at a pace you cannot find. If I had to say one word, it’s intense.

Jennifer Jarratt will pitch provocative questions and I will add color commentary. You can add your own colors, add links (if they pertain and are not promotional ads), and reveal your ideas about the future of work. Together, we will make some sense about future possibilities.

After all, we all care deeply about the future of work. It’s what we do, how we spend a great deal of time, an identity, and how we create, produce, and build wealth. Are you working in a new paradigm, or are you supporting a current or past way of work?

Join us on Twitter by searching for #futrchat. Please use #apf #futrchat in your tweets and the Question # such as Q1, Q2, Q3 etc. 

As alternative to twitter.com, here are two sites where you join the chat.

• Tweetchat   http://tweetchat.com/room/futrchat  
• What the hashtag  http://wthashtag.com/Futrchat (will automatically insert #futrchat, sometimes lags)

Images: hate my job and work and unity on flickr creative commons

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During the past month, Venezuelan architect Ana Manzo @anammanzo hosted a series about harmony on her blog The Place of Dreams. Mine was the 14th post. Who knew that architects, designers, contractors, and related folks could find so much richness in one word? You can read the entire series here.    

What is harmony?

My blogging friends defined harmony beautifully on Ana’s blog. They found harmony in rock and roll, poetry, nature, relationships, ancient sacred ground, and architecture. Diverse elements cooperate into a completely new sound, different and more complex than the individual notes. Harmony is not a state or condition; it’s a perfect balance achieved by coordinating diversity. Through complexity, we find unity.

Ana said harmony is love. I think that’s right. Love sees us and accepts us as we are. The Greeks agreed. They invented the word – harmonia – to mean joint agreement or accord. It’s compromise, joining, and fitting together. 

My question is: are we becoming more harmonious? And how do we find harmony in cities? First, I want to add one more idea to harmony – rebellion.

Is harmony always good?

Are there times we prefer life beyond accord?  Foucault fretted over harmony, which he saw as oppression, pressure to conform. That’s the rebel’s voice. I would call that pushing limits, testing the edges of conformity. In harmony, the notes desire each other, respect difference, and create a new sound, unlike any single note. They seek a community of notes, joining the most extreme, and all are transformed, transcendent, into a richer, more complex voice.   

We need single notes too. They come first, the ingredients of harmony. And the further they push, the more complex, varied, intriguing harmonies emerge. Individual notes must be celebrated. Sometimes I want Monk.   

How does harmony work in architecture?

Architects argue about harmony. Christopher Alexander believes that great towns and cities blend the parts into the whole. “When you actually get all those elements correct, at a certain point you begin to feel that they are in harmony.” Peter Eisenman claims that disharmony and harmony exist in the cosmos; we need both. He fights for individual expression.

Is it possible that these opposites are two sides of the same coin? These modern lions fight over the same terms. Disharmony and incongruity aim at order, as does harmony. Some choose to conform and others fight. That is a mindset, the either/or way of 20^th century thinking.

Too much conformity, you get suburbs or Disney-fake, like a one-dimensional painting. Too much clashing, you get single notes competing, Las Vegas-style. If single voices are never heard, if remarkable buildings are never seen, the city goes flat. 

What is harmony in society?

Harmony, you might say, begins inside of us and informs our relationship with the universe. It works through me to we, to things, to nature, to cosmos.

Claire Graves invented a developmental model of humans, societies, even civilization called Spiral Dynamics. The nine tiers of self-awareness (color -coded) or memes move towards greater harmony and connectivity – instinctive (beige), animistic (purple), egocentric (red), authoritative (blue), achiever (orange), consensual (green), integral (yellow), holistic (turquoise), next? (coral).

With more people, interconnectivity expands – or needs to. So we learn and adopt better models. It’s also what gives us hope – belief in a better future. With environmental problems and planet limits, our technological and social developments are barely staying ahead of our need to live together, our urge for harmony. Sometimes we fail catastrophically.

Plus you never forget those former memes; you incorporate them and add more parts, more skills and choices. You become more fully human. As societies, we are more connected than we possibly imagined. In short, we continually strive for greater harmony.

We started with caves and we ended in suburbs? Be still my heart! Surely we can improve on that. These one-note communities were just a stop on the way, an orange meme. Sometimes we really blow it, given too much power too soon, a baby with matches. And then we are forced to fix our errors, where the hardest part may be admitting it.

Jane Jacobs claimed, “Designing a dream city is easy; rebuilding a living one takes imagination.”

Here’s how I see these memes in cities. Beige – caves. Purple – primitive tribal villages. Red – Ancient Greece, Rome. Blue – fortressed cities, castles, cathedrals. Orange – industrialization, skyscrapers, suburbs. Green – new urbanism, sustainable design, revitalization. Yellow – living cities, restorative. Turquoise - adaptive, co-creating, biomimicry. Coral – too soon to know; biogenetics, nano, neurotech, transhumanism, singularity?

We are re-calculating, re-examining our lifestyles. How to become more harmonious, to live with seven, eight, or nine billion people? How to be in balance with the planet, to replenish resources rather than deplete them? And how to cultivate quality.

How do you love life? How do your clothes, home, city, your tattoos express that and feed your spirit?

The moderns (not in design, but in thinking) believe in an oppositional blue/orange mindset. My way or no way. Green thinkers want to cooperate, create communities, and build sustainably. Yellows adapt on the fly, see wholes and parts, and are comfortable with constant change, in other words, harmony. Different notes combine to express entirely new sounds while still celebrating you. 

Our cities need to be that way. I'd say the first harmonious cities will be yellow.  

Harmony is love and we grow towards it. Not harmony all sugar and sweet, pastoral utopias, but with all the tangs and twists of human nature wound together as separate strands for resilience. It’s the tattooed city, visibly expressing who we are and who we want to be.

• What color is your city? What's harmony to you?

Images, videos:  Thelonious Monk Round About Midnight; Calatrava Zubizuri Foot Bridge, Bilbao, Spain; Holl Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, USA; Maya Lin Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Washington DC.

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Antony DiMase of DiMase Architects  in North Fitzroy, Australia invited me to share a place that makes me happy. Their blog series “ Places That Make Me Happy” was inspired by my “Hilarious Cities” essay. His firm does beautiful work, check them out. They constantly explore ways to help people see architecture differently and be a bit braver about design. You can find my original post here.

See the full gallery on Posterous

When the Board of Trustees for the 1933 Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art initiated an international competition to select the architect for the new Bloch addition, I leaped for joy. Of the six star architects, only Steven Holl defied the committee’s instructions to connect with the broad Beaux Arts entrance façade. Instead, his addition attached to the short eastern end of the building. Even more compelling, instead of an above-grade structure that would diminish the park-like setting, Holl buried the addition and mounted five channel glass “lenses” on the roof for daylight. His radical originality springs from these two acts of rebellion.

Those five lenses are among the most ingenious inventions of the last decade. Holl defines their counterpoint with the existing building as the stone and the feather. The massive heft of the original limestone structure sits solidly on the ground while the white channel-glass boxes seem to dance lightly down the sloped landscape. Their glow at night is pure architecture magic.

My favorite space, the Naguchi Gallery near the extreme end of the building, opens directly onto the main lawn. After experiencing a series ramps and underground galleries, a panorama of the original building bursts into your view, framed by an expansive window panel. The effect is sublime; it always brings tingles to my skin.

When I seek inspiration, I skip to the Nelson and visit Holl’s masterpiece. I am happy now.

• What places make you happy?  

Images: interior, south lawn, distance shot – Steven Holl Architects; connection detail – Goldberger in The New Yorker; at night w/ trees – Washington Post. 

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The Association of Professional Futurists (APF) is hosting its second twitter chat on Thursday, November 18, 2010 from 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. EST. Use these hashtags: #apf #futrchat. 

Venessa Miemis  will join us as an invited guest  to share thoughts from  her recent SIBOS  keynote presentation and FOM research.

The Future of Money 

Beyond the currency arguments between nations, another more fundamental debate brews. You could say that it’s the difference between people who trust the traditional banking system and those that believe there’s a better way based on transparency, open data, and social bonds.   

Venessa Miemis , Gabriel Shalom , and Jay Cousins developed a short film, “The Future of Money,”  for the recent SIBOS conference  in Amsterdam. In a series of interviews, Gen Y’s say why they feel distrust or a disconnection with the current system and what they see emerging in the social currency space.  

Updates 

On twitter, you can find tweets by searching for #futureofmoney. Here’s some recent posts pertaining to SIBOS.

• Venessa believes that traditional financiers and Gen Y’s are living in different worlds.   Her proposals and concerns: 
  1. Intelligent investing opportunities like Groupon  local deals but for investing.
  2. Real-time data visualizations for money management like mint.com .
  3. Social network analysis for co-production opportunities that helps visualize network connections
  4. Local currency projects such as Metacurrency .com
• Gabriel Shalom  comments on responses to the film and the future of the FOM .
• Chris Skinner , a financial expert and co-founder of Shaping Tomorrow website, attended Sibos and executive produced the video. He wrote blog responses  to Venessa’s ideas and added a number of other points.

And here's a few developments since SIBOS.

• Mobile phone carriers teamed to allow direct payment system from cells, bypassing traditional banks.
• Italian hotels just held their second annual barter week.
• This recap by Heather Schlegel @heathervescent outlines major issues and possible scenarios for the future of transactions.
•  the Value of a Dollar Project, artist Jonathon Blaustein photographs food that equals a dollar.

I'm watching to see what people believe about money. We all use it and by necessity, we each manage it for ourselves and/or for businesses. Is there anything more emotional than the power of currency? And how do you define currency? Economic, social, environmental, political, cultural?

What is money? What does it do and what does it mean? Are you worried about the future of money? Or is it all roses ahead? What drivers could plague money, and cause drastic change? Are we at or nearing a turning point? Is there a significant, fundamental gap between financial experts and us, the regular people? If so, is the gap in communications, worldviews or something else? Is the distinction or gap useful or an “us against them” battle? Will it be useful in the future?

I wonder if we will see a range of ideas, conflicts of opinions, or will we agree quite readily on the future of money. What, do you believe, are the big issues for money by 2020? Or by 2030? Is it social/community, trust, transparency, or are other lumps or gems on the horizon?

Please Join Us – an open tweet chat

You are welcome to join the APF #futrchat and say what you believe will be the future of money. At our premier chat last month on the future of education, an intensive hour flew by and the results gave a snapshot of many varied perspectives and experiences, like a speed scan or survey.

As we did last month, Jennifer Jarratt will pitch provocative questions and I will cajole, contribute, coax, and retweet the saltiest items. You can do the same, add links (if they pertain and are not promotional ads), and teach, inform, persuade, thrill, or terrify us about the future of money.

What do you think will be the future of money?

• Tweetchat  -- http://tweetchat.com/room/futrchat
• What the hashtag -- http://wthashtag.com/Futrchat

Image: Organic Grapefruit on The Value of a Dollar Project by Jonathan Blaustein

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In tribute to November’s annual eat-fest, the Let's Blog Off  gang asks: What makes us thankful? You can read my blogging friends’ thoughts on Thanksgiving  here . They will make you laugh, cry, remember, relate, and even get organized. I am thankful for people who dare to imagine and push boundaries. Maybe people like you?  

For instance, a cow chewing its cud for hours performs the miracle of making milk. Creativity is like that. The imagination needs freedom to gestate. You can’t measure it, you can’t see it, and you sure as hell can’t sell it until the idea is ready. That peculiar work of invention frustrates bean counters no end. Yet new ideas depend on wandering, experimenting, failing, and recreating, on linking thoughts and images in strange wondrous ways and allowing explosions.

I live for the moments of feeling that rush of ideas, the joy of inspiration, being in the flow. It’s an out of body time where I may not notice food or drink and surely not time passing. I’m the cow in the field imagining a world that does not yet exist.

Every day someone is creating something so startling that you can hardly breathe when you see it. Your body reacts, prickles on the neck, tears of pure awe. You feel their genius. Yet few seeds of brilliance ever escape the womb of the imagination. We forget them before we can draw or write. The sketch doesn’t fulfill the vision. Others throw up roadblocks; it’s too large, too small, too bizarre, too too too many lines. Who knows, someone says it’s just too... And it will never be built.

Revelations 2010 

This year, ultra towers, kinetic structures, new towns, urban agriculture, and flying security robots transformed our images of 21^st century cities. A few are absolute revelations. I am thankful for the spectacular ideas and courageous acts of imagination and fortitude that survived the maze of barriers and naysayers. 

3. Living City Design Competition recognizes cities that are making extraordinary efforts to envision a socially just, culturally rich and ecologically restorative civilization. Can your city meet the challenge? Submissions due in February.

7. Of the hundred-odd books I devoured, a few absolutely blew my mind. Do not miss: The Original Green by Steven Mouzon (drawn from deep knowledge, a manifesto on society, sustainability, and architecture), Cartographies of Time by Rosenberg and Grafton (stunning images of ancient to contemporary timelines reveal belief systems through the ages), and The Watchman’s Rattle by Rebecca Costa (has innovation outpaced our brains?)

Do you look for people with purple hair, unexpected shoes, carrying a tube or drawing tools, or walking with a different gait? They hold some particular energy, the bodacious ideas churning in their gut, planning to capture the thing before it disappears. Perhaps that person is you.

It’s a bit of madness, by some standards. We all have it. We may camouflage it, forget it, fail to cultivate it, but we surely flung it around as children. Back when we wore fuscia boots, finger painted, and skipped. Someone somewhere told us our drawing, singing, dancing were not good enough and bang!  The imagination snapped inwards, afraid of further castigation. Is yours still hiding, damaged by thoughtless words, snooty looks?   

Gordon’s final lesson: you have a masterpiece inside you. If you go to your grave without painting it, it will not get painted. No one else can paint it. Only you. 

This Thanksgiving, I am grateful for the ideas that you share and the miracles you create. 

What makes you thankful?

• • Think how it is to have a conversation with an embryo.

    You might say, “The world outside is vast and intricate.

    There are wheatfields and mountain passes,

    And orchards in bloom.

    You ask the embryo why he, or she, stays cooped up

    In the dark with eyes closed.

    Listen to the answer.

    There is no “other world.”

    I only know what I’ve experienced.

    You must be hallucinating.  --Rumi

Images: Imagination Allows by Gaping Void Hugh McLeod; Lead Pencil Studio Non-Sign II, Blaine, WA; Container City, Mexico; Seed Cathedral at Shanghai Expo by Thomas Heatherwick; The Underbelly Project, New York City; Boatanic Floating Farms, Amsterdam 

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via buildingmoxie.com

You’ve finally wrangled a few days of work-at-home from the boss. Or you’re now the boss and the grunt too. Like 47% of the population who want to work from home, you’ve found your freedom and now you’re faced with your first workday at home.

The freedom is terrifying.

To get you past that first Monday morning scream, you might want a few tips. Because at this point I’ve done it all. I’ve drudged through waiting tables, selling soap, sewing uniforms, and cubicle work; and I’ve owned the office. Now I gleefully occupy a corner of my house, having conquered the fears of the liberty-challenged.

1. Setting the Pace. You are the boss and the employee. We all know at the office, one or the other can be stupid but never both. Figure out when you hit your stride during the day and dedicate those hours to employee jobs, the real productivity, the “big rock” projects. The rest of the time, you can be the boss.
2. Home Alone. You are working alone. That is, unless you count the dog, fish, or couch. To kick my collaboration addictions, I create journal conversations, draw diagrams, take long runs and walks, post trial ideas on my blog, check the twitter clan, and have built a network of worthy reviewers and co-conspirators. You really are not alone. You just work alone far more than before.
3. Imaginary Time. You no longer participate in daily rituals like rush hour, water cooler chats, lunches with the gang, commutes, or even normal dress-up routines. All told, that’s easily four hours of saved time per day, right? That’s like going to Macy’s sale of 30% off, spending $100, and expecting $30 cash. Not in your wallet, is it? Same deal: that four hours a day is gone, poof! You will never know where it went. There is no savings; there’s only convenience.
4. Power Door. You are going to need a door. Or a crystal clear sign. I have an upstairs room with no external connections where I seriously work. Then I have a downstairs desk where I do everything else and quasi-connect to family life. So I see both situations. The door solves everything. If you don’t have your separate space, make a truly obnoxious sign that says: “Do Not Interrupt the Interrupter in Chief.”
5. Double Used Home. You’ll be buying more groceries, toilet paper, and electricity. Call these purchases work-at-home expenses. It also means that your house gets a little dirtier with more dishes to wash. Unless of course, you never notice dust bunnies anyway. Then it’s just normal. Will a future buyer ask: has this house been driven hard or been a ‘Sunday drive’ kind of house? Mine's 24/7 now, so is my neighborhood; it's like meeting a whole new place. 
6. Real Clothes Wednesday. More laundry, less dry cleaning. More tennies, fewer hard heels. More pony tails, fewer blow dries. As I sit here in my running shorts and hoodie, I remember when I thought I would always wear suits to work, even at home. *laugh* Trips are bundled to minimize days in full regalia. Hey, I’ll be in real clothes on Wednesday; lunch then?
7. No is Beautiful. I guard my time like I never did when I was working in a team. Saying no to a project was tantamount to putting people out hungry. We aimed for yes. Yes to that new police station, school renovation, downtown planning project, the neighborhood group, design juries, and various boards or committees. Now I monitor promises because I’m it. You’ll learn yes-with-limits and, sometimes painfully, no.
8. Structure or Not. We skipped the apprenticeship program for at-home work, didn’t we? You are making it up. What time to start, stop, and take breaks? When is something ready to go? In project teams and schedules, the rhythm set the office mood. Now the rhythm is my rhythm. At the same time, the family has a different drum beat. Two tips: put your major due dates and meetings on the family calendar. And don’t start the laundry on a work day. It will wait.
9. Not-Spent Money. Live-work at home is cheaper. Lunch at home, slouch clothes, minimal dry cleaning, less gas, parking, wear-and-tear on the car (or dump the car) will soon offset the added desk, computer, power, and groceries. Shall you splurge? The first check: scan it, frame the copy, and then go back to work. The first $100,000: nice dinner, then back to work. And start figuring out when you should sell the business – 2 years, 10 years, longer? Make a plan; build your assets. Even if you keep it longer, do it by choice. Invest in freedom.

Every day that you get up and work in your hoodie and tennis shoes is a good one. When you pick up your kids from school or stop for an hour to shoot a game of hoops or take a run, be happy.

Working from home just shrank your ecological footprint dramatically. No office waiting for you all night, no house sitting empty all day. It’s full occupancy.

Work in a team telecommuting from home or work alone gives life new balance and, if you love your work, new meaning. You are the boss. And you are the grunt. Relish it.

via buildingmoxie.com

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Here’s my brief plus the background analysis.

Cap and trade's new champion may wear red  : While environmentalists have few victories to tout in the election, one major hurdle was crossed. Instead of making every vote a party split, as happened on the 2009 American Clean Energy and Security Act, cap and trade and other energy measures can be addressed as issues, not political scores. While Democratic votes are nearly assured, Republicans can now lead the way. The success of cap and trade in curbing acid rain, reducing regulations and allowing the free market to work opens the door. If also tied to job creation, climate change may finally have a champion, clothed in red.

The election sent thirty House Democrats who passed cap and trade (ACES) home on Tuesday, so some claimed these environmental soldiers were doomed by their vote.

However, exit polls showed a different story. Voters overwhelmingly stated that their primary concern was the economy (52%). Energy concerned only 4%. (the deficit was second at 8%). All issues with the exception of the economy held absolutely no sway for the vast majority of the voters.

Plus half the Democrats that voted against ACES were also ousted. This was not a vote against – or for - the Cap and Trade Crew. So long as Dems pushed and GOP said “Hell No,” energy legislation was dead and completely discounted by American voters due to the oppression of economic misery.

This election was clearly about the economy and jobs. Period.

Tell me, has any Congress in history registered so many significant wins and conveyed them more poorly to Americans? Erroneous messages have gone viral. If people only hear conflicting narratives with no clear answers, no compelling vision, then they will be confused.

Clearly explaining complicated issues is essential to successful governance in the 21^st century. Never in human history have there been better tools for creating or conveying messages. Washington needs drastic new ways to make difficult topics – like climate change and cap and trade - clear enough that we can agree or disagree with them.

If President Clinton’s or President Reagan’s experiences of working with the opposite party are any indicator, we could begin an era of smart legislation and a renewed cycle of prosperity. After woeful beginnings, each of these presidents worked with the other party towards important legislation. And they got re-elected.

Since Reagan’s staff invented cap-and-trade to deal with acid rain from power plant emissions, there is a Republican basis to use this tool. Rather than the huge costs the utility companies predicted, they spend $3 billion a year and save $122 billion! That is enormous financial success in anyone’s book. It worked so well, the Europeans adopted it for their carbon emissions. We are not explaining a new idea; this history is filled with positive facts to tell the story.

Furthermore, while thirty ACES Democrats were ousted this week, far more remained. So did all eight ACES Republicans. If President Obama works with the new Republican House leadership on significant carbon emissions legislation and past ACES supporters and new Democrats sign on, we have the basis for a successful bill.

That’s why I say with a mix of optimism (the GOP is mandated to govern) and realism (the Democrats, esp President Obama, must collaborate, persuade, and stand on real change on GHG’s): Cap and trade’s new champions may wear red.

Thanks SmartBrief on Sustainability

Thank you, Jennifer and SmartBrief for inviting me to comment.

What did you think about Tuesday’s elections in terms of environmental issues - energy, rail, smart growth, waste, water, air - green building and green cities? I'd love to hear! 

Images: Obama on CNN; Boehner on ABC News; masthead on UK Guardian; power plant on Smithsonian, carbon emissions from fossil fuels by end-use sector 2002 by Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

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